The coming June 24 elections will be a turning point for the country's system of government; however, the way it will affect women's political representation is also a priority. In the last parliamentary elections held in November 2015, only 82 of the 550 elected deputies were women, which constitutes 15 percent of Parliament. This is far below what is accepted as the critical 30 percent threshold for women.
What do the new lists say about women?
The lists of candidates submitted this week by each of the parties in the elections provide us with enough evidence on how things will be in the next Parliament. Of the six parties and their 4,200 candidates, 904 are women, a ratio of 21 percent. A promising ratio, if being a candidate was enough of an accomplishment, but to better analyze the lists, we need a three-pillar system.
The first, and the most important, is the number of women in electable seats. The second is the equal dispersion of female candidates across the country, not just concentrating them in the industrial or metropolitan centers. Women's empowerment should be a national issue, not an urban one. The third and final is an examination of the regions where parties failed to nominate even one woman, revealing their poor understanding of women's empowerment.
Urban-rural divide and the power of visibility
Starting with the last point, there are provinces where no party nominated female candidates, mostly in rural areas. However, in big, industrialized cities like Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Bursa, every party nominated an adequate number of women in electable seats.
This rural-urban division and the number of deputies a province has also directly corresponds with its population. Unlike provinces that send one or two deputies to Parliament, Istanbul sends 97, allowing parties to nominate many women. In small provinces that have only a few seats, most of the nominees are usually men.Another point to consider is the fact that in large cities, women, who are more visible, educated and socially engaged, find it easier to establish themselves politically, unlike their rural counterparts.
Numbers matter, but only for electable seatsThe pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) leads the female candidate list by nominating 230 women to Parliament. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) comes second with 137, far-right Good Party (İP) has 134 and the conservative Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has 126. The Islamist Felicity Party (SP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) trial with 79 and 69 female candidates, respectively.
A cursory glimpse at the figures show that conservative and right-wing parties lag behind in prioritizing women's empowerment. However, listing the numbers respectively does not give us a reliable analysis for female representation. We also need to look at the number of women nominated for electable seats. For instance, if the AK Party nominates a woman for Istanbul First District's 11th seat, that candidate will most likely be elected to Parliament. However, if the HDP does the same, it does so on the understanding that there is no way that candidate will be traveling to the capital anytime soon.
That is why analyzing provinces that did not nominate even a single female candidate may be more telling. The CHP has 137 female parliamentary candidates. However, in 32 provinces, it neglected to nominate a single woman. The AK Party has 126 female candidates but the number of provinces where it did not field a single woman stands at 29.The MHP and SP failed to nominate women in 44 and 51 cities, respectively. When one considers that Turkey has 81 provinces, this is an enormous failure and misjudgment. The SP's obvious anti-women policy pushes it to the political margins. Most of its 79 female candidates are housewives with no social media imprint. None appear to have shown any interest in politics before and none were nominated in seats where they have any foreseeable chance of entering Parliament. The SP appears more like a boy's club than a political party.
What about the absent female candidates?According to recent polls, the AK Party and the CHP will come first and second in the parliamentary elections which is why their approach to women's representation in their parliamentary groups is more important. When we amalgamate their female candidates, we see that 18 provinces in Turkey do not have any female nominees from both parties. No matter how we formulate it, this is unacceptable. The AK party and the CHP should work on these 18 provinces and decipher the structural problems that stand as obstacles for women aiming to be politicians.There is an even worse situation in some of the provinces. For example, in Gümüşhane, Amasya, Bilecik and Kırşehir none of the six parties fielded a female candidate. Women of these provinces do not have a single woman to represent their particular needs and priorities in Parliament. Additionally, in around a dozen provinces, only one party out of six nominated a woman, which means five times more male nominations. This is again a situation in mostly small provinces with poor rural populations. In other words, when the competition is over only a few seats and the electorate is mainly rural, male nominees crowd out women.
In this respect, the candidate distribution is unjust. Female politicians from these provinces need to get the opportunity to represent their communities in Ankara.
In the cases of four provinces, Gümüşhane, Amasya, Bilecik and Kırşehir, having no female candidates and about a dozen other provinces having only one from six parties, show that neither the HDP nor its opposite MHP, fielded a female candidate. This means we are confronted with a problem that cannot be explained by political affiliation, ideology or women's empowerment but a structural sociological problem of the gender gap. The two leading parties not having female candidates in 18 provinces is an even greater outstanding problem for female representation.
Women in these regions may be facing enormous socio-economic obstacles preventing them from competing on a level playing field. Most parties seem to have solved the problem in urban, metropolitan areas, but the situation in small provinces calls for significant and emergency investments to enfranchise women. The current situation in the lists shows the definite need by all parties to invest more in women's empowerment in different areas of the country.